


That's the Rub

by Losille



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 21:19:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6210481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losille/pseuds/Losille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An antique shop and an old oil lamp that may or may not have the ability to grant wishes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's the Rub

**Author's Note:**

> I forget where this idea came from. But it happened. I had to write it. There’s also no actual Tom in this, he’s just mentioned.

Leonie Harper loved antique shops, whether they were big malls with a million different little bits and bobs up for auction, or tiny little shops on the corner of the red-brick strip malls on Main Streets everywhere. However, antiques had never loved her—the presence of dust motes flying off of old things always waged a relentless and silent war on her sinuses, and the many purchases she made always depleted her pocketbook to levels she never quite recovered from with a modest teacher’s salary.

Despite such an unrequited and sometimes abusive relationship with her antiques, Leonie found it impossible to pass up the opportunity to add to her collections, especially so when a friend’s shop happened to be holding an estate sale.  

An old, childless widow had passed away a few months before and her belongings were liquidated through auction. Melissa became the proud owner of a bunch of junk she planned to sell off to turn a profit for a shop that struggled to make ends meet every month. Though Mel’s short-lived embarrassment of riches meant preferential access to all the goodies while helping set up for the sale, it also meant Leonie was forced, under best friend code, to help her sort through a million different boxes of dusty trinkets.

The sneezing didn’t stop. Neither did the red, watery eyes. Her nose plugged. She was sure her face had ballooned up and red splotches covered her cheeks. Rosacea—a gift of genetics from her mother.  A constant curse when people thought she was blushing, but her allergies were really only revolting.  Or she was overheated.  Or just because it was Tuesday and it wanted to make her cheeks red and splotchy.

“Come on, Leonie! We have like fifty more boxes to do!”

Leonie saluted Melissa with a middle finger, but felt a familiar tingling in her nose. “I’m taking a—a _… achoo_!”

“Did you take your allergy meds? You know what happens when you help around here.”

“I did take them.” Leonie sniffled into a tissue she pulled from her pocket. “But they’re not helping. I think the old lady had cats. You know what cats do to me.”

Melissa grumbled and dropped another empty box on the stack in the corner of the store. “I think you’re allergic to work.”

Leonie laughed. “So what if I am?”

“You’re lazy,” Mel said. She grabbed a small box and set it in front of Leonie. “If you’re going to sit there, go through this one.”

Leonie rolled her eyes, but dutifully pulled back the folded cardboard to peer inside the box. A human skull stared back at her with a toothy grin and hollow eye sockets. She practically jumped out of her seat, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing she had ever found in her antiquing travels.  And it certainly wasn’t the strangest in the lot from the old lady, who was in the running for being the creepiest old lady to ever live in a tiny New England town and who may have been a bona fide witch.

“What is it?” Mel asked.

Leonie picked up the skull, delighted to find that it wasn’t real bone. Just plastic dyed and painted to look it. “Alas, poor Yorick!” Leonie sniffled and dabbed at her watery eyes; fortunately, the scene didn’t take much acting on her part. “I knew him, Horatio.”

Melissa laughed. “Is it real?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “I didn’t want to call the cops.”

Leonie set the skull aside and continued on, pulling out a few pieces of cloth with celestial patterns, then a few crystals. A rose quartz. She half expected to find a crystal ball.

“It’s really starting to pour out there,” Melissa mumbled as she stood at the window, peering out into the dark afternoon. The weather forecasters had been threatening the Nor’easter for a week. Clearly, it was finally making itself known.

“I’m just glad it’s not snow,” Leonie replied. “It’s too early for snow.”

“They said it might change over tonight.”

“Boo.”

Melissa laughed. “Get back to work.”

Leonie shrugged and dug deeper into the box, her hand hitting a cold metal object. She pulled it from the mess, gasping at what she found.  It was old oil lamp, moderately sized, one of those lamps they used in every quasi-Middle Eastern film to depict an appropriate setting. The outside was encrusted in jewels—they didn’t look real, but she couldn’t quite tell the difference. Gems weren’t her thing.  Well, they were pretty look at, but she knew nothing about their purity classifications.

Two red gems in a flower shaped pattern on the side had gone missing, but other than that, it was a beautiful piece. The bronze metal needed some shining up, but it would be one of those objects that would sell quickly simply because it was pretty.

“Look, Mel,” Leonie called, holding up her find.

Mel glanced at her. “Oh, that’s really pretty. I love genie lamps.”

Leonie laughed. “Genie lamp? Really? It’s an oil lamp.”

“Yeah,” Mel replied. “But that’s what you see all the time, right? It’s in Aladdin.”

“I don’t think a benevolent big blue genie is going to pop out of the lamp.”

“Yeah, but some kid is going to see it and they’re going to want to get it because they love Aladdin,” she replied.  Melissa grabbed one of her polishing rags and brought it over with her. “Let me have it.”

Leonie handed it off to her friend. “You should rub it. You might get three wishes.”

“Ha.” Melissa scoffed, rubbing the metal with her cloth, but making little headway. “I’ll take anything right now. Save the shop. Find some money I didn’t know I had. Get you to shut up and finish working.”

“This is my day off, you know. I could have said tough shit and made you do it yourself.”

“Your other choice is sitting at home grading papers. And I know that’s the last thing you want to be doing.”

Leonie groaned and held the back of her hand to her forehead. “If I have to read one more paper telling me how Romeo is so romantic, I’m going to barf.”

“You could teach them something else. There are like fifty other plays.”

“Thirty-seven. And it’s core curriculum. I have to teach it.”

Melissa gave up and threw the rag at her. “Here’s the cleaner, and the rag. You deal with it.”

“I see how it is.”

Melissa laughed and returned to her sorting.  She stopped dead, though, and bent down. When she righted herself, she spun around to Leonie. Between her fingers was a shiny quarter. “I found some money! It worked!”

“Please,” Leonie replied. “That’s just coincidence. And it’s hardly worth it to say that’s your found money. It probably fell out of your pocket.”

Melissa shook her head.

“Besides, if you’re going to wish, you have to make it worthwhile and impossible, and then you definitely know it was magic if it happened.”

“Oh yeah?” Mel chuckled. “Then what would you wish for? I mean, besides your students loving some other character that isn’t Romeo?”

Leonie bit her lip. “This is stupid.”

“No, you do it. Then we’ll know if it’s real or not.”

“It’s _not_ real.”

“But it _could_ be.”

“Fine! If only just to prove you wrong,” Leonie exclaimed. She grabbed the lamp and held it between her hands, rubbing her fingers gingerly over the tarnished bronze. “I wish—”

God, what _did_ she wish for? Her friends and family were healthy. Her job was okay, even though it could pay more.  She didn’t want for much else. She had a nice, little apartment a few blocks away. Her corgi, Winston, kept her company on cold nights.  

Okay, well, she did want for one thing.  She wanted a boyfriend. Possibly eventually a husband. But at thirty-three, still a virgin, and the sufferer of a shy streak a mile long, she had little hope of that ever happening.  But that wasn’t something one wished for in a situation like this.

Unless she made it completely ridiculous.

“I haven’t got all day,” Melissa jabbed.

“Alright, alright,” Leonie replied. “Tom Hiddleston showing up and sweeping off my feet by reading poems and Shakespeare to me.”

Melissa guffawed so loudly, she practically spat all over the place.  


“I’m glad you think it’s so funny.”

“You didn’t rub as you said it,” Melissa replied. “You have to rub it _as_ you say it.”

“Don’t make me do it again.”

Melissa’s eyes narrowed.

“The things I do…” Leonie vigorously rubbed the lamp while repeating the words. “Tom Hiddleston. Me. Hot sexy times.”

Thunder boomed overhead and the lights went out. She tried to scream, but it died in her throat; she opened her mouth—wide—in shock as her fingers gripped the lamp as though it were a buoy anchoring her to reality.  She dared a look at Melissa, who gingerly reached across the space between them and peeled her hands away from the lamp.

The bells over the door jingled, signalling someone’s entrance.  Heavy, wet footfalls squeaked on the tile floor as they carefully walked into the store.

Leonie gulped. Her heart hammered against her breast in fear. It wasn’t possible. It just… wasn’t.

Was it?

Melissa tugged the lamp away from Leonie and set it down. She was silent. Melissa was freaked out, too. She was never at a loss for words in situations like this.

“Um,” Melissa said, finally clearing her throat and turning to go see who was at the front of the shop. “Hello?”

“UPS,” called the voice. “Need your signature.”

Leonie sagged with relief, a peel of laughter leaving her throat.  Melissa doubled over in mutual laughter until her face turned red and she couldn’t breathe.  When Mel righted herself, she dabbed away the joyful tears coming from her eyes.

“Hookay, I’ve had enough of this,” Melissa replied. “Let me sign for this delivery… and then we’ll go get lunch, because we’re clearly not going to get anything done right now.”

Leonie watched Melissa go, but when she had disappeared, glanced at the lamp again.  It was just a lamp.  A silly little lamp.  And there was a storm outside that had nothing to do with the lamp. They were not linked. And it was stupid to think anything like magic was real.

Even so, she carefully bundled it up and pushed it behind some old books Melissa had been trying to sell for years.

No one would it find it there. Right?

Leonie stood up from her seat and tried to forget about it as she grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder. She needed to get out of the shop—if not for her allergies, then for her sanity. She thought, as she waited by the front door for Melissa to grab her things, that maybe it was time to take a break from antiquing.  Just for a little while. Especially when it involved the creepy old woman’s stuff. She didn’t need any _real_ evil to befall her for mishandling some object.

However, she admitted, Tom Hiddleston would have been a nice consequence.


End file.
